Brain plasticity underlying acquisition of new organizational skills in children: A Rashomon analysis

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Clinical Psychology
• Child Development

Background:

• Organizational Skills Training (OST) is a therapeutic intervention designed to address deficits in executive functions.
• Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) is a neuroimaging technique used to measure brain activity and connectivity.
• Understanding the neural underpinnings of OST can inform treatment development and optimization.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate changes in brain functional connectivity (FC) associated with Organizational Skills Training (OST) in children.
• To examine FC alterations between the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and the anterior ventral striatum (aVS) following OST.

Main Methods:

• A randomized clinical trial (NCT04108273) involving 51 children (8-12 years) with organizational skill deficits.
• Participants were assigned to either immediate tele-health OST or a waitlist control group.
• rs-fMRI was used to assess FC changes between dACC and aVS, alongside parent-reported organizational skills (COSS-P).

Main Results:

• OST significantly improved organizational skills compared to the waitlist group (large effect size).
• Initial analysis indicated a significant increase, contrary to predictions, in FC between dACC and aVS in the OST group.
• Two additional analytic pipelines failed to replicate these FC findings, highlighting their tentative nature.

Conclusions:

• While OST improved organizational deficits, the observed increase in dACC-aVS functional connectivity was unexpected and not consistently found across analyses.
• The findings underscore the need for caution in interpreting the neural correlates of OST, emphasizing the tentative nature of the results.
• Future research should employ larger sample sizes, alternative control conditions, and potentially combine data for mega- and meta-analyses to confirm findings.